Sunday, April 26, 2015

At the “Stories From the Peace Corps” discussion at the University of Miami Wednesday, there were poignant moments and laughter; tales of mullahs and mud bricks in Iran; river merchants and a moustache in Venezuela and a birth in a village in Western Samoa. Together, they provided snapshots of ordinary people having extraordinary encounters. And as University of Miami President Donna Shalala, Knight Foundation President Alberto Ibargüen and Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet, all returned Peace Corps volunteers, told their stories, they also spoke of how those experiences shaped their lives.

“If you pay attention to what’s going on around you and shut up and listen, you are likely to learn a lot yourself,” said Ibargüen, who served stints in Venezuela (1966-68) and Colombia (1969-71). “I don’t think there is any question in my mind that the greatest beneficiary of my time at the Peace Corps was me.”

For Shalala, who served as a volunteer teacher at an Agricultural College in southern Iran from 1962-64, “once a Peace Corps volunteer always a volunteer.”

“You see how excited we are even after all these years,” said Shalala, who is retiring as university president at the end of the school year and will be leading the Clinton Foundation. “ All the other stuff in our resumes ... that’s boring compared to this.”

There was definitely a palpable passion in the telling of those stories, some of which influenced their lives and careers.

Hessler-Radelet, who volunteered to teach English in Western Samoa (1981-83), told the story of a pregnant woman in the village where she served, expecting her ninth child at age 32, and the experience of negotiating cultural tradition to bring her to a clinic for the childbirth. The move eventually saved the woman’s life when she suffered a hemorrhage. The Peace Corps experience, Hessler-Radelet said, “helped me find my profession in public health. I found my passion as a Peace Corps volunteer.”

Established in 1961, the Peace Corps traces its roots to a challenge issued to students in 1960 by then-Sen. John F. Kennedy to serve their country by living and working in some of the most remote corners of the world. According to the agency’s numbers, nearly 220,000 volunteers have served in 140 countries.

Today, the agency has 6,818 volunteers and trainees working in 64 host countries.

The nearly full ballroom included a few jacket-and-tie adults, some of them returned volunteers, but also a large number of students (there were at least a couple of skateboards in the hall). Some were considering joining; others were readying themselves to begin their service. (When asked to stand by moderator Steve Hunsicker, they mentioned they would soon be off to destinations such as Philippines, Botswana, Mali and Macedonia.) It’s also worth noting that the University of Miami recently ranked 24th nationwide for number of Peace Corps volunteers. It has 13 alumni currently in service and 396 alumni who have served since the agency’s founding.

For Shalala, the experience made her “a citizen of the world.”

“I know how poverty smells. I know what those mud villages, which represent so much of the world, look like. I know how people struggle to take care of their families,” she said. “ It transformed me in ways I saw in later years. It’s 50 years later and I’m still excited talking about my Peace Corps experience. When people ask me what’s the best job I ever had, I say ‘The Peace Corps.’“

In one of the funny moments of the evening, Shalala, of Lebanese descent, told the story of a letter “written in classical Arabic,” that her grandmother gave her to present “to the head man in the village. So when we arrived, I asked who was the headman and it was a mullah. So I presented him with the letter and he read it and he laughed, and the letter said ... ‘This is to introduce Donna Shalala, the daughter of a great sheik in Cleveland, Ohio.’”

For Ibargüen, who grew up in South Orange, New Jersey, the experience represented “the opening of the mind.” He told of how he was advised to bring extra suits as he would be a liaison with a ministry in Venezuela — only to find, just days after arriving to Caracas, that his name was on a list for Puerto Ayacucho, a town “down at the bottom of the map and it said Territorio Federal Amazonas. And I said ‘Amazonas? But that’s the jungle!’ And not only did they send me there, but they sent me to do a job that really required experience in business, experience in sales, experience in how to live in the jungle ... and it wasn’t just that. ... Everybody assumed we knew how to do things — so we did.”

A black-and-white photo of a young Ibargüen, in conversation with a local merchant, was projected on the screen, providing another light moment as he sheepishly noted that he had to grow “a big moustache. Everybody I knew wasancient, 40 years old ... I needed something that would give me some gravitas ... so I had a wonderful liberal arts education that had taught me that, in a pinch, ask questions, try to learn and listen.”

In fact, the art of listening was one of the themes of the evening, especially, as it was the case in these situations, when encountering different cultures, different traditions.

“If there is anything that Peace Corps encourages you to do, it is to listen and observe,” said Shalala, after discussing her experience building first a mosque and then a school in her village in Iran. “I learned more in that exercise than I think in any other time in my life.”

University of Miami President Donna E. Shalala and president of the Knight Foundation, Alberto Ibargüen, joined Peace Corps Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet Wednesday evening to discuss how their individual experiences as Peace Corps volunteers shaped their lives and careers.

The discussion was led by Steve Hunsicker, a South Florida field-based recruiter for the Peace Corps. Hunsicker worked in the Peace Corps as a volunteer in Tonga from 2007-09.

The Peace Corps sends American volunteers abroad on behalf of the United States to tackle pressing needs of people in other countries. Volunteers typically live and work in the country that they’re sent to for two years. The agency was established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961.

The University of Miami, a long-time supporter of the Peace Corps, was most recently ranked 24th nationwide for Peace Corps volunteers with 13 alumni currently in service and 396 alumni who have served since the agency’s founding.

Shalala worked in the Peace Corps as a volunteer teaching at an agricultural college in Iran from 1962 to 1964.

Her trip to Iran was the first time that she had traveled abroad. She said that her experience in the Peace Corps made her “a citizen of the world.”

Shalala recalled that her parents were not initially supportive of her choice to join the Peace Corps. Her father offered her a new car if she would not go to Iran, but she turned the offer down.

“What it really did for me was it opened up the world,” Shalala said. “I know what poverty smelled like. I know how those people struggle to take care of their families.”

Shalala said that she learned how to listen in the Peace Corps.

“If there’s anything that the Peace Corps encourages us to do, it’s to listen and observe,” she said.

This was in line with the advice that Shalala gave Dr. Julio Frenk, the newly named UM President. She said that her advice to him was to “shut up and listen” to the students and faculty of the university.

Hessler-Radelet worked in the Peace Corps as a volunteer teaching English at a secondary school in Western Samoa from 1981-83. She comes from a family with history in the Peace Corps. Her aunt was a volunteer in Turkey and her grandparents were volunteers in Malasia.

Hessler-Radelet accredited her experience in the Peace Corps with the discovery of her passion within the public health profession.

While working in Western Samoa, she became connected with a Samoan woman who was beginning her ninth pregnancy at the age of 32. The woman had birthed her first child when she was 15 years old.

Hessler-Radelet took the Samoan woman to a health facility nearby and introduced her to a midwife who would eventually help to deliver the woman’s ninth child.

After birthing her ninth child, the Samoan woman suffered from postpartum hemorrhaging. Hessler-Radelet said that the midwife saved the woman’s life, and had they never gone to the health facility the Samoan woman would have died.

Hessler-Radelet was inspired by the Samoan woman and the midwife to get into the field of public health. She ended up having 20-year-long career in the field.

“That midwife was my key to be able to apply [public health]elsewhere,” said Hessler-Radelet.

Ibargüen grew up in South Orange, a suburban town in New Jersey. He worked in the Peace Corps as a volunteer and leader in Venezuela from 1966-68, and then as a programming and training officer in Colombia 1969-71.

Ibargüen said that the most often Peace Corps volunteers don’t receive jobs that resemble an American “nine to five” job. He said that the jobs are engaged with the community and aren’t meant to have set stopping times, and that volunteers become a part of the local community during their Peace Corps experience.

Ibargüen said that the greatest takeaways from his experience were the skills he gained and what he learned during his experience.

“The greatest beneficiary of my two years in the Peace Corps was me,” he said.

Shalala said that she tries to convince undergraduate students not to go straight to graduate school after they get their bachelor’s degrees.

“I beg them not to,” she said.

Directly after she graduated from Western College for Women, Shalala spent two years volunteering with the Peace Corps in Iran, and then another year “wondering around the world.”

Shalala said that she encounters trouble when she encourages students at the university to volunteer.

“Students and their parents think they’re going to fall behind their generation if they spend two years in the Peace Corps,” she said.

Shalala assured students that they would not miss a thing, and that they should have an adventure. This was the reason why she joined the Peace Corps instead of attending law school or graduate school right after college, she said.

“When people ask me what’s the best job I ever had, it’s the Peace Corps job,” Shalala said. “With all the other stuff that’s on [my]resumé, that’s boring compared to the Peace Corps.”

“One of the things that I’ve notice that Peace Corps volunteers are able to do is to help other people discover their own potential and begin to have confidence in themselves,” Hessler-Radelet said.

Hessler-Radelet described the common experience of volunteers as a rollercoaster ride.

“You’re going to have the highest highs and the lowest lows you’ve ever had, and you just have to be ready for that,” Hessler-Radelet said.

Hessler-Radelet elaborated on the common experience, describing that the volunteer is initially on a high in the first couple months, and then hits a low as he or she starts missing home or doubting him or herself. The volunteer finds him or herself hitting other highs during the experience as they connect with more people and participate in pleasantly memorable moments.

“I think most of us underestimate the impact that we have,” said Hessler-Radelet. “Because a lot of the time our impact that we have takes many years to manifest itself.”

Both Hessler-Radelet and Shalala agreed that the impact of the Peace Corp experience is best measured by the stories from the volunteers and the people they interacted with during their volunteering.

“Life is transformed by service,” Hessler-Radelet said. “You don’t have to be in the Peace Corps to be transformed by service.”